The Priceonomics Blog has delved deep into their bicycle price guide to rank cities according to (among other things) a “Fixie Index.” The blog searches and then compiles pricing information from “millions of listings” on the web including eBay and Craigslist.

Since “Fixies (fixed gear bikes) are considered to be a strong indicator of hipsterness,” writes the blog’s author Rohin Dhar, they decided to run the numbers and see which cities would come out on top.

According to their analysis, the city that came out on top wasn’t Portland (much to their surprise):

By mining our database of 1.3 million bicycle listings, we can tell what are the largest markets for used bicycles, how the prices vary by region, and where people who prize fixed gear bikes live.

The blog ran the numbers nationwide for the number of fixies per capita and the winner was… San Francisco. That surprised them:

Before we ran the numbers, we were pretty sure the answer would be Portland. San Franciscans (which we are) take a particular delight in being weird, but not being quite as weird as the people from Portland. This seemed like a great opportunity to point out “hey we like these impractical but cool bikes in San Francisco, but we haven’t taken it too far like those misguided folks out in Portland.”

The results put Portland solidly mid-pack.

They then ranked cities according to the overall size of their “bicycle market” (the number of bikes for sale). San Francisco came out on top; but after adjusting the data for population, Portland ended up third (behind Bend and Boulder).

They also ran the numbers through several other datasets and came up with some interesting results. They even looked into the median price of bikes being sold and ended up debunking a widely read 2009 Freakonomics article that said Portland had fallen victim to “bike inflation.”

In the end, Mr. Dhar hilariously concludes that, “Unfortunately the data did not comply with our desire to tease the people of Portland,” and that, “Despite our best efforts to paint Portland as a bunch of hipster bike snobs, the data simply does not support such a conclusion. The people of Portland just seem to really like bicycles, but not ones that are particularly expensive or difficult to pedal up hills.”

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35 Comments

DaveJanuary 17, 2012 at 3:26 pm

Sounds like Bikesnob’s Pistadex. Though clearly a little more in depth

I just went to LA for xmas/NYE. There were lots of huffy and swhwinn cruisers on the beaches. The ride of choice for people in the city was definitely fixed geared bicycles. I would guess that outside of beaches, we saw only around 20 people on bikes. Probably 15 of the bikes were flourescent pink/ purple/ green/ or orange bikes with no hand brakes. I didn’t see helmets or lights. I rode about 20 miles one day and 45 miles another day. I knew that there wouldn’t be many cyclists, but I was really surprised how few cyclists there were. LA would be a great cycling city, if it wasn’t for all of the auto traffic. I did see some great bicycle murals.

In OC, the ride of choice was carbon roadbikes decorated with lycra clad riders.

for sale listings are a horrible indicator… using for sale stats would indicate that nobody in Portland drives a Subaru GT, but actually there are a ton of them but they’re bought so fast that they’re never easy to find for sale… so it’s possible that fixies are so popular in portland that they’re bought up before they make it into any stats… or that they’re sold offline since the bike culture here is more intimate…

Someone said Portland is going from Track to Rack. Meaning people are moving away from fixed gears to rando or touring bikes to explore and adventure on. I can see that. And I dig it. I’m still riding fixed in this weather though.

I look forward to the possibility that we might reach a point in civilization where nobody pressures themselves to track major social movements and attribute them to inaccurate and/or incomplete causes. That’s when I’ll be more confident that humanity can completely stop competing with itself. [rhetorical question]What are we trying to accomplish when we express what we believe we know about what other people are doing and why we think they’re doing it?[/rhetorical question] I could answer by referencing some vague behavioral pattern such as “being weird” or “being utilitarian”, but I wouldn’t really know, especially if I had only been paying attention to the motives that a limited number of people participating were acting on. Few like being “lumped together”, but many apparently forget to stop “lumping others together”.

So the object lesson here is that I should:
() go to the least bike friendly city in the US
() purchase a few bulk police auctions of bikes
() package my haul for cheap slow rail transport to PDX
() repair the repairable/recycle the irreparable
() resell for an obscene profit

If these bike-hating city’s police department had any sense they’d trade auction lots with other nationwide departments to optimize the money recouped by taking advantage of skew product demand nationwide.